The driver’s actions are at least comprehensible, a response to aggression, alarm and danger. The activists’ actions, in contrast, are a deranged provocation, a twisted entertainment. A gratuitous cause of danger. And the kinds of creatures who play these unhinged, sadistic games cannot be relied on to observe normal moral boundaries.

She, the activist, and her gang of masked associates, are the ones needlessly initiating the drama. They are the ones going out of their way to aggress random strangers, creating a credible threat, and doing so with glee. It’s an in-your-face display of recreational malice. They are high on themselves, on their mob power, and they’re loving every minute of it. These are not activities indulged in reluctantly or under duress.

And the activists’ power lies in an assumption that their victims will not risk injuring their assailants.

But to insist that the victims should remain trapped, inert, and at the mercy of their aggressors, indefinitely, and while risking greater danger to themselves or their property, does not strike me as a morally persuasive position. And note that the activists typically rush from all sides, rapidly surrounding the car and its occupants, intensifying the alarm, the likelihood of panic, and drastically reducing the driver’s options. This is not accidental.

There’s an implied dare. The game being, “You won’t do what’s needed, despite our alarming and menacing behaviour, because you’re nicer than us, less vain, and not unhinged, and so we can dominate you and terrorise you, and break your stuff, for as long as we want, for shits and giggles.”

Well. I would suggest that the activists’ own actions render their wellbeing of very low importance.

Again, people who behave in this way cannot be relied on to observe normal moral boundaries. Are their victims, their chosen targets, those alarmed drivers and passengers, the ones just going about their business – are they supposed to assume that the mob of unhinged aggressors exulting in their capture and harassment will not press their advantage and do something worse?

At what point, precisely, would one’s alarm be considered sufficient? By all means use the comments to thrash out this terribly modern moral problem.

Update, via the comments:

Drivers and passengers who suddenly find themselves being harassed by self-styled activists would be wise to consider what kind of person would aggress them in this way. They wear masks and rush in front of moving cars, and then encircle them, trapping them, in order to dominate and terrorise the occupants and thereby feel important.

Importance being conceived as having power over others.

To assume that the bedlamites who do this – who choose to do this, over and over again, exulting in each triumph – are somehow good people, or that they mean well, or that they are likely to show restraint and not violate further boundaries… seems foolish. To say the least.

I was reminded of this rather shocking incident, from Portland in 2016, showing similar ‘activist’ tactics, and in which a lone female driver is encircled by a mob of baseball-bat-wielding ‘protestors’ who are trying to smash her car’s windscreen into her face while videoing her distress. For amusement purposes. And bragging rights, one assumes.

Because they’re such righteous people. Not, say, sociopaths with a pretext.

Commenter ccscientist adds,

The primary reason they’re behaving in this way is because they really do enjoy behaving in this way. Again, it’s not done reluctantly or under duress. It’s chosen. It’s a go-to activity. The rest is pretext, a fig-leaf for self-pleasuring.

As I said here,

And what kind of person would have urges like that?